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Shownotes:

Oh hey, TBD Fam!

I’m so excited for today’s episode as we dive into 3 (of many) signs of entrepreneurial maturity that I’m sure will resonate as you reflect on your own journey!

We’re diving into:

• Cultivating a Holistic Definition of Success
• Learning How to Take a Loss (this one might be a little tender 💖)
• Learning How to Spot When You’re Upper Limiting

I’d love to hear which one resonates for you! Send me a DM on FB and let me know!

Links mentioned in this episode:

• Growth Getters Live in San Antonio (April 11th-13th)
• The Law of Divine Compensation by Marianne Williamson
• The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks
• FLOW (My holistic mastermind)

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Transcript:

You’re listening to TBD, a podcast for brilliant coaches, consultants, helpers and healers creating their best work and their most meaningful contribution. I’m your host, Megan Hale, business strategist and thought partner to help you distill your wisdom into your most potent offers and the multiple six figures that go with it. I’ll be the first to tell you though, as someone who has done it, this path is far from a straight line. There are highs that are lows, and so many moments of uncertainty in between. But if there are two things I know to be true, it’s you always know what you need to know when you need to know it. The next night stuff is always on its way. Let’s do this. 

Hello, hello, my friends. And welcome back to the show. I don’t know what it’s like where you are. But it is finally springtime in Omaha. And my southern soul is so incredibly happy about it, we will likely get one more snow this month before we are fully in the next season. But it is just so good for my well being to have warmer weather to have a lot more good walking weather.

I’m pretty stoked about it. And so I hope that wherever you are, you are starting to sense the seasons changing if they have not already changed for you. One of the things I love about living in Omaha is the changing of the seasons. Because for most of my life, I have been down in the south or disliked either hot or hotter. And I have been kind of out of tune with just the natural cycle of the seasons. So it’s been really, really nice to be here. And we are also in the final 12 month countdown of my husband officially retiring from the military, which is really wild to say because he will have been in service for 21 years when he retires. And we’ve been thinking about this transition for just years and years and years. And it is finally here and just kind of feels weird. Like this is our last official summer in Omaha we’ll have our last official fall and winter coming up our last official spring. And we’re still trying to figure out where we’re going. So lots of life transitions over here. 

This past week also marked some pretty big milestones and business transitions. The first being it’s been 18 months since I launched my most recent one key offer flow into the world, which was my first multiple six figure launch that ushered in so many big growth hatches from learning the ins and outs of accessible curriculum design to focusing on the best possible delivery to going from a team of two to a team of five overnights. And then to a core team of three this past year, so many big lessons on  team, especially balancing hiring timelines. So you’re giving your new team members enough time to learn the business. So they don’t feel like they’re swimming in the deep end. And also finding that balance of anticipating growth and leading the team to support it. And what happens when you don’t end up pursuing that growth, which was in my case, or that growth not being generated at the level that you were expecting, and then having a lot more help than you really need so many growth edges between all the things. 

 Then last week, we had a team member step back to focus on their body of work, which I’m so incredibly excited for them. And also, this was the first time in my business journey where I’m having the experience of working with someone for over a year where we’ve really established an amazing working relationship. And their absence is really going to be felt. I’ve adored working with them so incredibly much. And I’ve also learned so much from having them as part of the team this past year. And so we had our first team meeting this week as a much smaller, more intimate team of our original two. 

 I think with this shift plus 18 months of some really big work, and also seeing a big content project I’ve been working on for the past eight months, nearing completion, I have really felt a natural slow down over here. And I think there are lots of times when we have high output seasons in life or business. And we simply adjust to working and moving at this level. And when the workload or life load starts to shift, we start to realize we’ve actually been going at a certain pace for a really long time to either get through something or accomplish some things.

Then when we shift into a slower, lighter season, it’s that contrast where we’re actually like, Oh, damn, I feel like I really been operating in this eye level for a second, right. And that’s exactly what I’m feeling. And I remember feeling that way after 2018 and 2019, those years of early motherhood, where everything is just so intense. And then one day you wake up and your kids don’t need you as much, they’re more independent, there’s more time for yourself, and there’s almost more space to simply breathe. That’s how it kind of feels right now in business like it’s been 18 months of high output. Not all the time, like there has been plenty of rest, there has been plenty of vacation. But there’s been this constant presence of creating, building, refining and learning at a really high level. And so in a way it feels like this past week has really marked the end of a chapter for me.

Like there’s been the first eight years of business that has gotten me here. And now I’m experiencing this natural shift of starting to look at the next eight years ahead. And I think too with the grief of my brands, like a lot of things are just creating this natural transition point for me. So anyway, that’s what’s going on over here. 

I’m also heading down to San Antonio Do next week to speak at growth getters alive, which is hosted by my dear friend and colleague, Natalie Gingrich. So if you are in Texas, I would absolutely love to see you at this event, I’m going to be speaking on how to create a business where every gift has a space to belong, as we talked about how to fold our values, gifts, wisdom and passions into a cohesive brand. And I’m really excited to talk about this, especially how We clarify the difference between our lens and our lane when it comes to building our unique body of work and offers in the world. So definitely check out more ticket information down in the show notes, if you’re interested in joining me, very accessible ticket price. And this event is going to be so much fun. So definitely check it out. 

So our topic for today was really inspired by a Voxer chat with a client recently. And I have to tell you, I have been loving Voxer coaching lately, like these past eight months, especially having required so much and sharing time on my computer and creating, creating, creating, I literally feel like I’ve been working on a fricking book over here with this curriculum. So it’s been a very massive project that are just required, like a lot of screen time. And so I have loved being able to go on walks and coach from my phone and really, really calling in more of that.

In our voxer chat, I was talking to a newer client who’s just starting to build out her one key offer with me and flow. And she went through a recent enrollment period with her current offers that didn’t go as expected. And as we were chatting, she shared that she had tried some new things this time around, which is why maybe it didn’t go as she had planned. And although she was disappointed, she was not making a mean anything about her or her work. And so we processed this for a bit and talked about her next strategic steps. But I also made sure to mirror to her that her ability to not take this personally is such a big sign of entrepreneurial maturity, our ability to observe our results to stay curious to interpret our data, and then take the next steps accordingly. 

Okay, now this does not mean that there is no disappointment there is and we are not bypassing it. Anytime something doesn’t go the way we want it to or the way we expected there’s going to be disappointment, right? But it’s not the emotion that shifts it’s what underneath it, or why you’re disappointed in what you’re making it mean about you. 

Okay, and so this combo is what really got me thinking about entrepreneurial maturity. And although there are definitely more than three signs that you have grown in this area, I wanted to focus on just three for today.

So the first one that I want to dive into is really around cultivating a holistic definition of success. I have another flow client right now who’s going through a launch for her one key offer and there are few things as vulnerable as a launch okay. Not only are you being visible at a high level, not only are you delivering value at a high level, but you also have really clear metrics you are trying to reach and sales goals you are hoping to hit while also holding exquisite space for yourself while you do some really big things. This means taking good care of your energy. Being on your A game when it comes to mindset and celebrating the fuck out of yourself or even going after a big dream to begin with. I absolutely love supporting my people through launches because I have done so many of them over the years. I know the emotional roller coaster is so incredibly well.

 But to there are a few times we grow at such a fast pace because there’s just so much expansion in such a short amount of time launches are like these short little marathons where our mindset is put to the test our faith is put to the test, our ability to keep showing up even when the evidence hasn’t arrived yet is put to the test. And although launches can be a lot energetically as you’re navigating the vulnerability that comes with them. I personally love the challenge. I love the value. I love the connection. I love the ride. And what I’m noticing about this particular client, though, is her ability to stay focused on how she wants to lead this launch. She’s following my spacious launch process to a tee which includes a solo vacay to celebrate yourself for saying yes to your vision and also restore your energy. 

Okay, she’s delivered a next level training experience for her people where her DMs have been flooded with AWS and takeaways she has felt on cloud nine for how she has shown up and delivered. And although she very much wants to hit her sales goal. And as on her way there, the way she’s viewing this launch is focused so much more on the variables she can control versus the ones that she can’t. 

So although I know we all want to move into enrollment periods where the number of sales is in our control, that is just not how it works. And one of the more dangerous things that we can do for our mindset is to rest the success or failure on a variable that you cannot control. And so cultivating a holistic view of success means that we started to bind us on a variety of variables, where sales as is the case with a launch are only one part of the equation. 

We define launch success by the sales we make. Yes, the new people who come into our world though, the way our content lands for our people. The connection and our hos created the way that you showed up for your work, the way you felt being a steward of your work, the level of faith, you demonstrated the way you took care of your energy, the way your sales assets performed and their KPIs, the way you executed on your strategy, and most importantly, how you chose to end your launch can be one of the most important variables of all. 

The question I always ask myself during every single launch is how do I want to show up in the final hour? Because sales goals are reached or not. I have full agency to end this enrollment period in a way that makes me feel aligned With how I want to show up for my work, my people my vision and my values, I one of the reasons that I love using a launch as an example of creating a holistic definition of success is because there’s just so many different variables we can pull from right? But we can literally create a more holistic definition of success for so many things. Where have you been cultivating a black and white definition of success for yourself? Have you been hard on yourself because you’ve only been focusing on one variable. 

And furthermore, was that variable, even within your control, right? One of the things that can really start to open up a more objective viewpoint of how things are actually going, is having a more nuanced definition of success. And as it’s not only just for your launches, but it’s about your business as a whole. It’s literally for any goals that you’re pursuing, even like creating new routines and habits, which is incredibly hard for us to do consistently as humans, right, so much more likely to focus on the times when we did not show up for the habit than to really see all of the effort and the tiny shifts that we have been making to really build this new way of being for ourselves, right. It’s such a natural tendency for us to do that. 

So allow your definition to focus more on the process than only the end results. This is such a potent skill of entrepreneurial maturity, not to mention also offers so much more opportunity to celebrate yourself, right. And listen, this journey of entrepreneurship needs frequent celebration and reward my friend. So make sure you’re seeing yourself fully for all that you’ve done. It’s the doing it and going for it that counts most of all, and I will share having worked on this for myself, for years and years and years. 

Sometimes I really need to have a little bit of distance from things before I can truly see it right. Like when I launched flow into the world back in August of 2021. I literally couldn’t even see how much of a huge milestone this was for me, because I was just so focused on all the other things that had to get done, where I couldn’t even take a moment to celebrate myself, okay, so sometimes celebration can’t necessarily happen in the moment like we want it to. But it’s really important for you to come back to that right. 

So in October following that launch, I actually threw a huge celebration party, I invited clients, I invited friends to really mark the occasion of everything this launch had been okay, so even if you can’t celebrate the moment, doing a delayed celebration still counts. 

The second sign of entrepreneurial maturity is the ability to take a loss. Now this might be a tender one. It goes without saying the entrepreneurship comes with a lot of risk, it’s quite unlikely that you will go through your journey without experiencing some kind of financial loss, okay, you’ll invest in that copywriter for that launch, he thought would recoup those costs, you’ll invest in that program that you weren’t able to focus on, you’ll invest in that strategy only to find out it wasn’t as aligned as you envisioned it be, you’ll hire that PR firm that didn’t bring you a return on that investment, you’ll host a retreat that puts you in the hole as you’re learning how to price things, right. Like there will be financial loss and your business journey, my friend, not everything you do is going to pan out the way you think it will.

And when it doesn’t, the best possible thing you can do for yourself is realize that loss is part of taking risks, you would not go into the stock market thinking every single pick was going to be a winner, you would win some you would learn some right? So you get out of there. Every loss is a learning experience. Always. Some of them are more challenging than others, I will promise you that.

 I read the law of divine compensation years ago by Marianne Williamson. And there’s one passage in that book that really stuck with me, which talks about the first time she led a live event and ended up losing like multiple 1000s of dollars. And she was so incredibly disappointed in herself. Like what was she thinking that she could pull all this off? Right? And what is she going to do now being in the hole. And as she was processing this, her dad said seven key words to her that are just so profound in their meaning. He said you can afford to take the loss, you can afford to take a loss.

So last year, I led my first conference called Field good money live. It was held in April of 2022, which would have been a totally fine time to host a conference, except in January, I started the hiring process to get ready for an upcoming launch. I was planning in May, which I did not end up doing. February, I was interviewing and getting all the legal paperwork together to hire my first employees, which was a whole project I did not anticipate taking all of it it did thinking about company policies and going back and forth on my lawyer to make sure we were really integrating my values and how we do things and the language that I wanted to use on my offer letters and all of those things, right. And then March I was onboarding, which was also so much more time intensive than I thought it would be to really make sure that my new team members were feeling supported, right. And I was also going through a launch for a six week intensive I was offering at the time. So I was completely overwhelmed doing all of these things. And I honestly don’t even know what I was thinking like I was leveling into a new leadership role going from a team of two to a team of five overnight. I was launching a program to get ready for a bigger launch in May while also trying to prepare for my first conference which had its own big planning details going on. Like I look back at this and I’m like Megan like what did you think was gonna happen? 

But sadly, with all of those moving pieces, like the marketing for the conference just did not get the attention that it deserved. I was in my head about it. And so instead of canceling I committed to delivering it even with low signup numbers. And so I was originally planning on 100. Attendees then shifted that goal to 50 with everything else that I had going on, and ended up having 25k. Now, everyone absolutely loved how intimate that conference was, which was a whole lesson in and of itself. But I had planned and priced that event to break even at 50 signups right and so of course, only reaching half that goal, put me in the hole delivering it. The fascinating thing about that experience, though, was when I came back to Marianne’s dad’s words, you can afford to take the loss. And what that meant to me last year wasn’t just about being able to afford the financial loss, Kay, I can promise I did not just have that cash sitting in my bank account. 

But what this really meant to me is that I could afford to take the ego loss, the not reaching my goal loss, the ability to realize this one loss would not financially ruin me, I would be able to make it back. And I could trust myself to earn it back. Right. And I was able to roll with it was so much more compassion. 

So if you have experienced that financial loss, what would shift for you if you knew that you could afford it? And I’m not talking about affording it on paper, okay. The math might not be mapping where you literally say, oh, yeah, no problem, I can financially afford this. But really thinking about how you can afford it financially, because you know how to make it back. You can’t afford it emotionally, because it was just part of learning and growing and business, that you can’t afford it spiritually because it means nothing about you, right, really being able to take a step back to depersonalize that to see this for what it was. So try that on and see how it goes. I can promise you, this was such a huge hug for me last year, as I was navigating my own financial loss with the conference and not letting it rock me in the way that it truly could have. 

 So the third sign of entrepreneurial maturity that I want to talk about is recognizing your upper limits. And if you’ve read the book, The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks, you know, he talks about the concept of upper limit problems, when you have a tendency to burn shit down that’s on the precipice of taking it to the next level. 

Okay, one of the more challenging things to figure out in business is when things really need to change, because they aren’t a good fit to your strengths, your values, your vision, or your gifts. And when you’re simply feeling the discomfort that comes from getting what you’ve been wanting, or being really close to getting what you’ve been wanting, okay, it is a very real thing to be afraid of getting what you want, which I know does not always make the most logical sense. 

But this is especially true when you’ve been working a long time for it right? You start to question yourself, Is it really okay for me to have? Have I earned it? Will it change things like what happens next, okay. And it can also create a feeling of void, which is a completely perplexing experience. Like if I have this thing that I’ve been wanting for a long time, then what do I want next, right, so we get comfortable wanting the same thing. And then when we’re really close to getting it, or we do get it, it can feel really uncomfortable to receive it. And I see this a lot when my clients go to a new revenue level, it takes some time to acclimate to this new normal and create a sense of nervous system safety here, okay. And so what do we do when we are regulating and really trying to hold space in this discomfort, we can definitely start focusing on all the things that are wrong, right, we can create problems that don’t exist, we can start focusing on all the things that need to be improved, who are really sinking into it. And listen, burning it all down can be greatly satisfying when you’ve been operating in a way that’s out of alignment. But burning it all down can also have you throwing the baby out with the bathwater when you’re simply running from the discomfort of growth. 

And so when we’re on the precipice of crossing into the next level, we will likely feel challenged by the way we’re being asked to grow. We won’t feel super comfortable in our leadership, our skills, our mindset, our knowledge, or maybe even all of those things, right. And so instead of focusing on what feels uncomfortable, we focus on how we shift into something different instead, the ability to stay in that growth tension, though.

That’s where success happens. How can you create more pause to discern if you’re reaching an upper limit? Or if things really do need to change? And a few questions to ask yourself, are these what’s really feeling uncomfortable right now? And I want you to get specific. Does this require slight tweaks or a massive overhaul? Okay, really watch how your minds might be putting you on that big pendulum swing, right? Those things have to be radically different for you to feel the way that you want to feel really challenging that thought because that might not necessarily be true. What you might need instead are just two degree shifts, two degree pivots, that can really shift the discomfort that you were feeling. 

Okay, so this is why it’s so key to get specific here. The second is what fear shows up when you think about letting more success in. For me, the answer to this question has been I’m afraid this next chapter will require even more work than I’ve already put in. And I don’t want to put in any more high level work right now. Right? I want a season of savoring. And so if that is the unconscious fear that’s operating in the background, then why would I let more success in because it’s just going to bring more work with it right. So what fears are showing up For you, when you think about receiving more success, the third is what am I loving? And how can I do more of that, during times of deep growth, you’re likely going to be learning how to do things you have never done, you are going to be mentally stimulated and mentally challenged. Okay? You might even go through a tequila and tears moment, like I did last year building so many systems that were like 0% fun, and really challenged my skill set. 

Okay. How can you see your current growth edge as an acquisition period of a skill? How can you see your current growth edge as an acquisition period of a skill? What’s happening right now you are acquiring a new skill? Of course that is comfortable, right? So in that space, how can you do more of the things that you love to do to help balance out some of that mental challenge and stimulation that’s going on? Okay. The last and this is probably the most important is how long am I willing to sit in this discomfort. Another telltale sign of entrepreneurial maturity is being able to accurately judge the need for urgency and decision making. Some things will absolutely require urgency. Many things, though, do not cause this discomfort, creating a sense of urgency for you. And if so, how much of that urgency is real? Okay. This one is such a big piece of really learning how to practice grounded decision making. And instead of running from the discomfort and making quick decisions to shift out of that, really creating more resilience of sitting in that discomfort to feel it out. 

How much of this really is requiring some of those big massive overhauls, how much of the discomfort that you’re experiencing right now are just really finding your stride with things, okay. And so the reason that this one is so important is because if we don’t give ourselves enough time to really find our stride with things, we can miss out on a lot of success, because it’s almost like we’re planting roots. And those roots are like having to make their way through the soil, which is challenging, they’re having to push through the soil to find their way. And we’re just ripping it all up. And so we’re taking that progress away, right. And so really being able to sit in the discomfort to build resilience to sit there, to feel it, to feel it out, is really, really important when it comes to shifts that you need to be making in your business. 

Okay. So to wrap things up, I was just leaving, thirdly, planning for all of our flow clients. And one of the things that I had them go through is this very simple framework that I created, which is called the win framework, which is where you’re really kind of reflecting on the things that have really worked for the past third of the year, what needs improving, and also like, what happens next, like what new steps do you want to try now that we’ve reflected on what’s working and what’s going well, and what might need some improvement, right. And as we are going around the room, really sharing our wins or our glues, as I call them, there’s so much rich reflection on just how much growth has happened these past few months of really deepening entrepreneurial mindset, deepening entrepreneurial leadership, and deepening entrepreneurial skill set, right. And I think it’s so helpful to be able to reflect on how you are doing, how you are growing, and really thinking about how you are maturing as an entrepreneur, I don’t think that this is a topic that we talk a whole lot about. 

But I would absolutely love to hear from you, especially for you to send me a DM on Facebook, and let me know what you’ve been noticing about yourself this past year. Like are you grounding down into a more holistic definition of success? Are you integrating some financial losses, knowing there’s simply a part of taking risks? Are you becoming more and more aware when you’re Upper Limiting yourself, right, and really challenging yourself to sit in discomfort in ways that maybe you didn’t before? All of these are such big wins. And they’re also such big skills for strengthening your entrepreneurial mindset and leadership.

So as for me, I know that I am sitting in this organic transition of completing my first eight years of business which I don’t know why it feels so meaningful. Like normally you would think of 10 years at a time, right? But for some reason, this eight year mark feels like a very natural completion for me. And so now I’m looking into the next eight years and really reflecting on who am I now as an entrepreneur, how I have grown as an entrepreneur, and also being aware that I have some Upper Limiting going on for myself, so I’m really challenging myself to sit with that. And to lean into the discomfort and even ask myself the questions that I asked you about. But even just being aware that that’s a process that’s happening behind the scenes, really allows me to approach this with a lot more curiosity and discernment. And I think that is so incredibly key. 

So until next time, my friends, I am wishing you the courage to keep showing up. Even when clarity is still forming, knowing, trusting, believing that the next step is always on its way. See you soon